Wednesday, June 08, 2016

JUST A REMINDER: THE GOP IS STILL INCAPABLE OF AGREEING ON AN ALTERNATIVE TO TRUMP

Two guys who probably don't agree on much -- Ace at the greybeard right-wing blog Ace of Spades and Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg Politics -- think Donald Trump could be dumped at the Republican convention.

I have heard that there are in fact schemes a-brewing to replace Trump with Ryan at the convention. How, you say? Well, simply by rewriting all the rules to allow delegates to vote as they will, for any candidate.

Now you may say "But that's extreme; they'd destroy the party."

Yes, but there are two competing considerations:

1. Elite GOP opinion-- the Upper Middle Class and Capital Class that controls the party -- is horribly embarrassed by Trump, and, little secret, they run this thing. You vote in it, but they run it.

And the people who run it can change the rules as they like.

2. Trump appears to be a likely loser.

... that's what I take all this judge bullshit to be about -- the psyops necessary to justify the party rewriting the rules and kicking Trump the hell out.

... it's worth noting: All it would take to dump him in Cleveland would be a vote to free the delegates, followed by having at least half of the convention oppose him on the first ballot.

Technically, they wouldn’t even have to have an alternate candidate. Trump dissenters could vote for various other candidates -- or Mickey Mouse, for that matter -- as long as a total of 1,237 of them don’t vote for Trump.

Remember, the campaigns don't directly choose most Republican delegates. They are bound to a candidate, but may or may not personally support that candidate. And the convention has the final word on its own rules. The bottom line is that a convention majority with the support of the convention chairman -- House Speaker Paul Ryan, in this case -- can do pretty much whatever it wants....

I’m not predicting anything. I’m just saying it'd be great to have a count after the final delegates are chosen this week of exactly how many of them were chosen by Trump and dedicated to him.

Granted, without a candidate to rally behind, the result of defeating Trump at the convention might be chaos. But at some point, does chaos start looking good to some Republicans?

But GOP insiders couldn't settle on a consensus Establishment candidate in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. They couldn't settle on a consensus anti-Trump candidate when the field began to be winnowed. They couldn't settle on a #NeverTrump strategy -- vote for whoever can win a particular state? put all the chips on Ted Cruz? -- when Trump began sprinting toward the finish line. The most prominent advocate of a third-party challenger, Bill Kristol, fantasized on Twitter about all sorts of A-list names (Mitt Romney, Condi Rice, David Petraeus) until he finally settled on a C-list pundit David French ... who then turned him down.

So it's not that replacing Trump is theoretically impossible for them. It's that they're clearly incapable of collective action that would be in their mutual self-interest.

Ace thinks Paul Ryan would be the replacement nominee. RedState is floating a rumor that Scott Walker would take the gig if the party offered it. But meanwhile, Ted Cruz has the second-highest number of delegates, as well as an overgrown debate nerd's fondness for parliamentary infighting. Oh, and I suppose the threat of convention unrest from Roger Stone and others if Trump is denied the nomination is still on the table.

So Trump's not going to dethroned. The GOP can't possibly get its act together.

15 comments:

Paul Ryan? Biggest. Fake. Ever. No balls for Convention anything? Scott Walker? Ha Ha Ha. Louie Gohmert/Ron Johnson caliber. No its Trump. Like it or not. So you lose Presidency and Senate, maybe House? but you keep your Soul? Oh shit that was gone long time ago? Why not run McConnell? Only kidding.

I'll say it again I think if they can figure out anyway at all to get out from under Trump they pick Ryan or someone like that if only because of the Supreme Court. The idea of Hillary possibly picking three nominee's must be giving the Koch brothers nightmares

Daryl's other brother Ernest gives me my point of entry here: Truup IS the sold of GOP .. BASE!!

I read Ace, as much as any RW blog - him and Allahpundit at Hot Air are my faves. Allahpundit may actually have his shit a tad too organized to be all that reliable a spigot into the crazy, but Ace can be relied on to have a firm grip on the outter right edge of those who can at least both read and write, so at least Ace serves as a measure of some sort (Mark Ace!). And just to be clear - to me, anyway, Ace isn't arguing at all for Ryan, his pref he SEZ woulda been Rich Perry BION! He's fine with Trump, but he's equally find with Armageddon, so ...

Anyway, that's MY take on why it'll be Trump. I'm not arguing with Steve M on the idea of the GOP's general incompetence aat the presidential scale anyway, but IMO there's enough near the top - like Ryan, McConnell, etc - who understand that if there's an insider insurgency, the Republican party as a viable commercial model would be committing hara kiri.

(Agaubm U suspect not just Ace but Allahpundit as well would be okay with that. Site traffic is bound to go thru the roof for those two with HRC as preznit, so a little mid-general excitement would just accelerate the inevitable.

Now ... assuming the worst for the GOP in Novemer, and assuming also that the connected crowd finds some way to wrassle back control of the party infrastructure from Trump (to wit: how much they pay him to go away and how long it takes before he croaks or strokes),what kind of dude do they go for NEXT go-around?

Just as an aside -- I think the Democrats, on the other hand, have a clear alternative if for any reason Hillary isn't nominated. And no, its not Bernie, he has burned too many bridges with the party already and likely will burn many more before July. The alternative the Democrats would jump to nominate is Joe Biden.

1. Their primary structure For instance they have a lot of winner take all states that make it easy for one person to jump out in front early and stay there.

2. Citizen's United. Maybe I don't understand all the money ins and outs but it seems like the republicans have all these billionaires who want to fund there only little fiefdoms, Adelson, the Koches, ect and they don't seem to be very good at it. Could it be that these people additional money hurts more than it helps.

Also does the GOP seam much more rudderless then the Dems. They talk about dems and herding cats but the GOP seems like it's lost all the cohesion it had when Reagan was president. They use to joke about how lock step they were but that seems to be gone.

Cathie from Canada, take it from Matthew in Mississippi...no. Hillary is our nominee. We voted and everything. It's a done deal.

******

The GOP should change its initials to LOL. Pretty soon, it'll be like that old prison joke, you won't have to say anything but the punchline, "GOP!" or "Republican convention!" and everybody laughs. That is, of course, if you know how to tell a joke.

Oh Matthew, I am extremely excited that Hillary won the nomination and I think she will make a great president, better than many think, perhaps one of the great presidents in terms of what I think she can accomplish.But I just found it amusing that the Dems are so much better off than the Republicans because the Dems have an excellent alternative if needed, while the Republicans have no body.

And if the Republican Elites manage to ace Trump out of the nomination, Plan B is that Sarah Palin gets her son Trac alone in the den, breaks out a deck of cards and says to him, “Honey, why don’t you play some solitaire?”

It would not be a surprise if Cruz is dreaming of a scenario where the chaos Steve describes ensues, and he is "reluctantly" persuaded to place himself at the disposal of the convention as the natural and only logical nominee. But I can't see it ever going beyond a dream.